Wi-Fi 802.11ad to Enable Multi-Gigabit Data-Rates.

IEEE, one of the largest standard setting organization, this week announced that it had approved the IEEE 802.11ad-2012 amendment to provide data rates up to 7Gb/s. With the improvements introduced in IEEE 802.11ad, this amendment is a complement to the existing IEEE 802.11 standard, acting as the foundation for tri-band networking, wireless docking, wired equivalent data transfer rates and uncompressed streaming video.

The IEEE 802.11ad specification adds a "fast session transfer" feature, which enables wireless devices to seamlessly transition between the 60GHz frequency band and the legacy 2.4GHz and 5GHz bands. The ability to imperceptively move between the bands ensures that computing devices are always “best connected”, enabling them to operate with optimal performance and range criteria.

"IEEE 802.11 is undergoing a continuous process of refinement and innovation to address the evolving needs of the marketplace, and there is no better proof of that fact than IEEE 802.11ad. By migrating up to the next ISM band (60 GHz), we break ground on new spectrum for IEEE 802.11, enable an order of magnitude improvement in performance and enable usages that have never before been possible with existing IEEE 802.11 – namely wireless docking and streaming video," said Bruce Kraemer, chair of the IEEE 802.11 wireless LAN working group.

Through the vast improvements in spectral reuse at 60GHz and an efficient beam forming technology, IEEE 802.11ad enables great improvements in capacity. Many users in a dense deployment can all maintain top-speed performance, without interfering with each other or having to share bandwidth as with the legacy frequency bands.

More than 300 individuals from equipment and silicon suppliers, service providers, systems integrators, consultant organizations and academic institutions from more than 20 countries participated in IEEE 802.11ad ratification. The global collaboration effort led to the successful completion of the standard 50% faster than the previous major PHY/MAC IEEE standard of this magnitude. The amendment was published in December 2012.